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Al-Qaeda sees Mexico border as prime spot for transporting anthrax

Congress has been warned by FBI Director Robert Mueller this week that al-Qaeda has ongoing efforts to acquire weapons of mass attack for the purpose of attacking the United States.

"Al-Qaida remains committed to its goal of conducting attacks inside the United States,” Mueller told a House appropriations subcommittee, Newsmax.com reports. “Further, al Qaeda’s continued efforts to access chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear material pose a serious threat to the United States.”

Mueller added that Al-Qaeda, to accomplish its goals of conducting new attacks, “seeks to infiltrate overseas operatives who have no known nexus to terrorism into the United States using both legal and illegal methods of entry.”

Sheikh Abdullah al-Nasifi, a known al-Qaeda recruiter in Kuwait, told al Jazeera television in February that the ideal infiltration point for terrorists seeking to attack America is Mexico's border.

“Four pounds of anthrax – in a suitcase this big – carried by a fighter through tunnels from Mexico into the U.S., are guaranteed to kill 330,000 Americans within a single hour if it is properly spread in population centers there,” al-Nasifi told al Jazeera.

"There is no need for airplanes, conspiracies, timings and so on. One person, with the courage to carry four pounds of anthrax, will go to the White House lawn, and will spread this 'confetti' all over them, and then will do these cries of joy. It will turn into a real 'celebration,' al-Nasifi said. "9/11 will be small change in comparison. Am I right?"

Mueller reminded lawmakers that a 2008 National Intelligence Estimate estimated that a terrorist WMD attack remains a top priority of terrorists and noted that a December Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism report warned that “the risks are growing faster than our multilayered defenses” to prevent such an attack," and that “it was more likely than not that terrorists would attack a major city somewhere in the world with a weapon of mass destruction by 2013.”